


all the works and days of hands

by haloud



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst and Smut, Canon Compliant, Emotional Sex, Love, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Rough Sex, Sexual Tension, Sparring, The smut is only in chapter 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 10:55:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21390994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: Alex and Michael spar to pass the time, and Alex learns a lot about his fighting style.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 34
Kudos: 200





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: crossposted from tumblr. the second chapter contains smut, but chapter one very much stands alone.

Alex bounces on the ball of one foot, shifts his weight to test the suspension of the other. He’d debated which to wear for this; in an actual fight it’s more likely he’ll be wearing his everyday leg, but the blade is a shiny new toy, and it’s something he’s trying to let himself be excited about. His heart starts to trip with anticipation as he tests the solid spring it gives him. How long has it been since he did this? Hand to hand used to be his forte, but somehow it didn’t end up being a featured event in his PT.

On the other side of the mat, Michael stretches, curling his hands and flexing his wrists, pulling his arms up to the ceiling and exposing the line of hair leading down past the waistline of his pants, cinched tight. He’s lost weight. Somewhere else, at some other time, Alex would walk over to him and lock his arms around his waist and make Michael wrestle him to get free and he’d be warm and solid and brimming with warmth in his grasp. But right here and right now, Alex bounces on his feet again, flexes his palms, and just can’t wait to get his hands on him again.

“Do I get a safe word?” Michael drawls. His hair is getting long again, mostly from neglect, but whatever the case it’s long enough now for him to gather it up in a little bun at the top of his head. He’s missed one flyaway curl sticking out from under the hairband in a perfect spiral. It’s either an accident or him playing dirty.

“No need. I plan to go easy on you.” 

He leaves the response practically served on a platter. _But I like it when you go hard. _He can hear the way Michael’s throaty voice would shape the words. But Michael doesn’t take the bait. The corner of his mouth quirks up in a little smile, but that’s all.

“You sure you want to do this? Maybe I didn’t have the same plan.”

_For me or for you? _He wants to ask. He knew going into this there was a chance Michael was just looking to get his ass kicked, and that’s not a service Alex is looking to provide. Not for Michael. Not now, and not ever.

But if it’s a fight he needs to make his head go quiet for a while, Alex can give him that. There was a time he had to look for music in new and violent places, too.

“I think I can handle whatever you’ve got in mind,” Alex replies, and whatever it is Michael hears, it makes him duck his head off to the side, hiding away his shuttered golden eyes.

Michael steps onto the mat first. He rolls his shoulders and takes his stance—there’s nothing polished about it; he’s all coiling, all readiness for hurt and to hurt, lacking the balance and potential energy. Alex steps up after him. Michael probably wouldn’t appreciate a correction, but Alex is more than happy to provide an object lesson. He might stay on his feet through sheer tenacity, but that doesn’t make him a match for someone with training.

Alex tests the give of the mat beneath his blade. He’s got decent traction, but the distribution of weight might take some getting used to before he figures himself ready for serious combat.

Michael throws the first punch. No power behind it, it curves just to glance off Alex’s chest, and he sidesteps it easily, catches Michael’s arm as he goes past, and ratchets it cruelly up his back, putting sharp pressure on his shoulder as he gasps.

Too easy.

Alex lets him go and nearly skips back into position. “Again,” he says, raising his fists.

Michael rolls his shoulder back with a grimace, tosses his head back like he’s forgotten his hair is up. He rolls his shoulder again, and it must hurt, because his grin is wide and feral under his sleepy eyes.

Alex sees the moment so, eh, why not? He smiles too and reaches out to beckon with two fingers like they’re in a movie. It’s worth the little flush of embarrassment to see the way Michael responds, coils to pounce, and flings himself in for the tackle. Alex turns into the momentum, plants his foot between Michael’s, and sends him sprawling over his shoulder. He hits the mat with a _whump, _and all his breath leaves him in laughter, all his long limbs flung out all around him, his shirt ridden up to his ribcage.

“It’s like you’re not even trying,” Alex says, reaching down to help him up. Michael’s palm is broad and hot, their fingers sliding together, filling up each other’s spaces.

Michael bounces on his toes when he springs back up. “Maybe you’re just a class above my normal partners,” he says, cracking his knuckles before taking his stance again.

“Well, I won’t argue against myself. But you’re not exactly doing credit to the drunk population of Roswell right now, if you’ve been able to beat so many of them like this.”

“Nah, that’s just you selling yourself short again, Private.” He licks his lips. He must have bitten the inside of his mouth when he fell, because the point of his tongue is scarlet red with blood when it darts out to touch his lower lip. “You wanna go again?”

“Always.”

The word jumps out of his mouth without warning, and he means it, glad to have trusted his instincts. God it feels good, his muscles flexing, his heart pumping, putting Michael on the ground again and again every time he pops back up again, feeling him squirming into every hold Alex puts him in, gorging himself on every breath and grunt of exertion that falls out of Michael’s chapped pink mouth. There’s no words between them, just the sound of skin on skin and Michael’s sweat on Alex’s skin and the simple joy of _exertion _and _desire _and _action; _Alex’s favorite cocktail; and Michael goes on his back over and over again, and Alex has never been so drunk.

Sometime near when their time in the gym is coming up Michael lifts himself from his hips as Alex stands over him with his chest heaving and Alex’s blood _burns. _It’s dangerous, this, and not because of the bruises they’re putting on each other’s bodies, but because at any moment Alex could wrap his hand around that long throat, at any second he could be digging his thumbs into the delicate machinery behind those bent knees. Again and again Michael tries to strike first, throwing himself on the mercy of Alex’s most savage instincts. They only had an hour but Alex did a lifetime of learning.

He doesn’t reach down to help Michael up this time, and Michael makes no move to stand. Alex is going to savor for a few more moments the delicious power that’s in having Michael at his feet; the feeling that he might be strong enough to protect him, as long as they’re together.

Because Michael doesn’t actually know how to fight. He knows how to duck and weave. He knows how to provoke. He knows how to take a fall. But the second Alex’s body goes still, muscles burning in the aftermath, all he can see are the ways Michael would be _dead _if he was fighting anyone else. And on the heels of that realization comes this awful hollowness, this—what is it like, to look at the man you love and see how easy it is to destroy him? Two days from now, past the lactic high, past the lingering soreness, Michael will be out on the streets all gray and straining and looking for something to fight against and someone will take him up on it. And the second he comes across someone with more skill and less morality, he could be—

“You’ve got a lot to learn,” Alex says, and he knows it comes out cold, but he has no other way to say it.

Michael laughs like Alex could possibly tell a joke, and Alex raises an eyebrow.

“You have enemies and no access to health care beyond what Kyle can provide in the field.”

_And no Max to make it all better, _he doesn’t say, but the words flash through his mind and hit the back of his throat like a shot, hot and angry, that Max was stupid enough to go off half-cocked and abandon his siblings to a life without any kind of healing.

Alex continues, “Additionally, those enemies have ways of rendering you without your extra abilities. Stop me when I’ve hit upon the part of this you think is funny.”

Michael shakes his head. A few more curls, dark with sweat, have come free of his bun, and they bounce against the mat with his momentum.

“If this is the best you can do, someone’s going to have to teach you to do better. You’re going to meet me here at the same time next week. And if you don’t show, I’m coming to you.”

A shudder runs through Michael, starting at his shoulders, ending at his bare feet, toes curling. There’s a startling vulnerability in that strange familiar face, and. Alex is going to protect it. He has to. He will.

“Promise?” Michael purrs. It sounds sexual, like _you wanna go for a ride, _like how all of Michael’s questions have always sounded sexual, like Alex might tell him no if it was for any other reason. Like that’s all he’s good for and all he’s after.

But Michael doesn’t know how to fight, and Alex does, so Alex is going to win.

“I promise,” he says, and he does.


	2. coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the version of this where they end up fucking ;)

The gym is public, far too public, for the kind of things Alex wants to do to him. They’ve tempted fate too sharply already by letting it go this far, but Michael was too beautiful, sweat gleaming on his skin, muscles flexing and shifting in the fluorescent light, and the area they’re in is private enough for this, at least, for throwing him up against the cinder brick wall, cushioning his head to avoid any sort of impact, and kissing him whimpering senseless.

His mouth opens so easily, and Alex chases the blood, swiping his tongue across the little bitten spot inside his cheek, soothing it, stinging him. Michael curls his tongue around his, stroking them together, tasting him, seeking, always seeking more contact, more closeness between them, and Alex gives it to him, will give him anything he asks.

They pull apart with twin gasps. Alex’s lips are tingling and bruised-feeling, and—he checks his watch—any minute now whoever’s booked this space after them will be arriving. But it’s too soon. Alex isn’t ready to not be here, where he can put his hands on Michael without breaking something in either of them. He isn’t ready to let go. He’s never ready to let go, anymore, but sometimes he has to.

“My place?” he asks roughly. He winces at his own words, too close to pleading, too flayed open and raw, but—he doesn’t say a word to take them back. Trying new things. That’s Alex, these days.

Michael doesn’t answer; he doesn’t use a single word. He leads Alex out of the ring, out of the room, his hips switching fetchingly in his loose gray sweats. It’s not something Alex would usually do in public either, not even that much, not even just keeping his eyes trained on the dimples of Michael’s lower back and lower. But his blood is already pumping. If anyone wants to talk shit, Alex will put them on the ground. He _can. _He almost _wants _to. He has to check himself in passing mirrors to make sure he’s following Michael at a normal speed and distance, not letting him go ahead, not circling him, not following at a _prowl _until he’s hunted him down and has him all to himself.

In the parking lot, Alex waits for Michael to get into his own car and drive away. He’s already planning, in fact, what he’ll be thinking about, which bruises on which planes of Michael’s body he’ll picture under his hands and tongue, when he gets home and has to strip himself of all this pent-up energy, adrenaline-arousal. But Michael leans his back against Alex’s car instead, facing away from the sun, and waits without saying anything the whole time Alex methodically strips off his blade to replace it with his everyday foot, which he’s more used to for driving. It’s only when his foot is firmly affixed and his engine started that Michael pushes off and stalks a couple spaces away to his truck.

He trails Alex out of the parking lot and every mile out to the cabin. He’s distracting in the rearview, the only thing for miles in every direction.

They pull into Alex’s driveway and he slams the door of his car behind him, urgency hot on his heels; he wants to wrench Michael’s door open and pull him to the ground, pull him into bed, can’t stand waiting another second with his cock ready to harden at a second’s notice, at the slightest contact.

He doesn’t have to intervene, though; Michael comes to him with equal urgency, stopping only at the threshold with enormous amber eyes watching Alex, like he needs to be invited, like he needs permission to come in.

“Come in,” Alex says, and files this away in the back of his mind, where he keeps the other things Michael does, the other deferences he makes, the other ways he tries to make himself small or unnoticed or uncared-for.

Inside, Alex doesn’t bother with the lights; doesn’t even bother with locking the door. He goes straight for the bedroom, though an instinct him says not to both with that, to put him over the back of the couch, in the open, with the windows down so even out here where it’s all solitary and open the world can hear Michael’s need, his pleasure. But he takes him back to the bedroom anyway, because there’s nothing like having Michael wrapped up in his bed, hidden away in the place that’s most Alex’s of this whole damn house, for his eyes only.

He avoided having Michael in his bed for so long. And even though Michael isn’t _his _right now, isn’t anyone’s, cut every single string holding him in place and begged to be carried away, Alex puts him there anyway. Maybe it isn’t fair. Maybe it isn’t right. Maybe Michael doesn’t know that’s what he’s doing, that every time Alex shuts the bedroom door behind himself he gets a rush of primal joy. Alex is keeping that close to his chest for now.

Michael strips off his shirt and climbs onto the bed. Alex twinges with irritation that he didn’t wait for Alex to peel him out of his clothes and lower him down onto the mattress, so the second he thinks he’s positioned himself, Alex grabs his ankles, pulls his legs apart, molds him to whatever form he desires. Michael’s moan is low and soft as he slides easily across the sheets.

“Alex,” he murmurs, glancing over his shoulder.

“I’m going to turn you over,” Alex replies, deciding all at once he can’t do this without looking him in the face, without seeing every little movement of every little muscle that makes Michael up. He doesn’t give Michael time to protest, but with how easily he rolls with the firm grip of Michael’s hands, maybe he was never going to. The thought makes Alex smile, makes him come in to kiss him on the chin, on the jaw, teeth on his ear, sighing into the curve of it. Hesitant fingers come up to play gently with the hair at the nape of Alex’s neck, and at the first touch Alex’s grip tightens vice-like on any part of Michael he can reach.

He loves him. He loves this man, who touches him after a decade like there might be any way in any world that Alex turns him away now that his choice of path is clear. He’s going to love him again and again until he touches him like he means it.

Sitting back up, Alex gets his fingers into Michael’s hairband and pulls it free, sending those curls tumbling down around his face, and Michael yelps as his hair is caught. His pupils are big and black in the dim light.

Sliding the elastic around his own wrist, Alex says, “You can try to get it back from me later.”

“Maybe I want you to keep it.”

_I’ll snap it on my wrist to remember to think of you. _And Michael is so afraid, Alex knows, of being forgotten. Left behind.

Well. Alex plans on the both of them leaving with plenty of mementos.

To kiss him next, Alex climbs over him, putting all his weight on top of him, clutching his hair to keep control of the angle and pace; Michael’s breath goes deep and shuddery like someone trying to stop crying. His hands curl into fists against Alex’s back as he holds on, matching him bite for bite, taste for taste.

With his other hand, Alex kneads Michael’s ass possessively, digging his nails in, and each time he grabs him, five tingling crescent points of pain, Michael whimpers, cock twitching against Alex’s thigh. Alex’s knuckles push Michael’s sweats down the curve of his ass with every pass, and Michael presses up into his weight, feeling himself getting pressed back down, letting himself be held and held up while Alex stakes his claim with bruising appreciation. Alex’s thumb rolls over his hole on one pass, and his thighs compulsively clench together, and Alex smirks into the next wave of their kiss. He makes sure, then, to tease him with dry, massaging touches around his rim, and Michael spreads into every touch, throwing one leg over Alex’s hip, pushing back against him, into the cut of his nails and the heat of his touch and shuddering in his arms.

“That’s it, that’s it,” Alex murmurs, among all the other little nonsense words that fall off his tongue, soothing things spoken right into Michael’s mouth.

“_Alex,” _he gasps in return. It’s all he’s able to say. It’s the only thing Alex needs to hear.

Sucking Michael’s lower lip into his mouth, Alex fumbles behind him for the lube and a condom in the bedside table. Michael’s eyes flutter open, maybe by accident, because he looks almost shocked to see Alex still there, his eyes going huge and his brow furrowing and he rolls his hips up, cock sliding in the crease of Alex’s thigh, as if to test to make sure Alex’s weight bearing down on him is _real._

Alex drops the lube onto the bed beside them. Michael pulls away, just slightly, and wriggles like he’s trying to roll over, and Alex strokes him at the back of his neck like he’s soothing a frightened horse.

“Where are you going?” He asks.

“Want to feel you,” Michael responds, “As hard as you can. No holding back.”

“Anything you want.”

“I _need—” _he breaks off at that one word, but that’s okay. Alex understands. It’s not enough for either of them to be sore muscle-deep tomorrow. Michael will pull away, rip himself from every part of himself that’s trying to reach out to Alex and _connect. _He needs something heavy and hurting and solid like the soreness of Alex inside him, claiming him, to survive the shock. Even if he can’t say it, Alex understands.

“Okay.” Alex shuffles back, holding himself at just the right distance that every inch Michael moves their skin slides together, soft on soft, friction on friction, keeping them tied together.

Michael is shaking by the time he gets on his stomach. He hides his face in his folded arms, but Alex wraps his hands around his biceps and even though Michael tugs feebly Alex still manages to get his arms over his head instead. He stretches. His spine pops. He doesn’t stop shaking.

“No hiding,” Alex says, wrapping his arm around Michael’s stomach, dropping a kiss at the top of his spine, right on the knob of his T1 vertebra, and rests there holding him until he feels his head bob into a nod.

He hasn’t given Michael any rules for this…not-quite-anything their relationship has become, except for the given fact that he won’t be _other _to anyone, and if Michael wants him, he’ll be his only, even if just for that one night. _No hiding _becomes one, though, right there and then. It’s no good if it’s not both of them, there and real and in the moment.

Michael always responds so _beautifully _to orders when they come from Alex’s mouth. Alex holds him until the trembling stops, and it doesn’t take long. Then Michael pushes his ass back against Alex’s groin, and Alex laughs nice and breathless against his velvet skin and rubs back at him, getting his cock to harden back up again. He slips out of his pants, hungry to be closer to him, and sighs loud, content, at the first hypersensitized slide of his cock nestled in the crack of Michael’s ass. Michael bucks back against him again, and Alex folds his hands snug over the wings of his hips to hold him in that tight, only for Michael to try and try to get in even _closer. _

“Soon. I’ve got you.”

“_Alex._”

“I know.”

Alex uncaps the lube and tips it directly onto Michael’s hole, where his fingers are already resting, spreading and rubbing and ready to _push _inside, to fill him up where he’s aching for it. He makes a mess, leaving slick trails all across Michael’s ass and thighs that sheen in the low light, over his skin and over the tiny, tiny red welts still picked out over the curve of his ass from the bite of Alex’s nails. He wastes no time working two fingers inside, over-slick and gliding smoothly in and out, pressing on his prostate on every third stroke and making him _yip _every time, a hitching little noise of pure pleasure that makes Alex _burn. _

After stretching him just enough, Alex works himself inside and pauses only a _second _to let him adjust, to feel him circling his hips and panting at the thick fullness inside him. He sets a quick rhythm, pounds into him with ruthless efficiency, thighs smacking against the back of Michael’s thighs, no quarter, no mercy, and Michael begs him, and worships him, in long and thankful whining noises. Sometimes he tries to push himself up onto all fours, but he just ends up lowering himself back down to rub his face on the bedspread, to leave himself as open and vulnerable as he can for Alex’s taking, dotting the sheets with tears and sweat and drool.

And Alex? Alex is drowning. In the heat and the rightness of him. Nothing else ever compares, not to this, no matter how hot or how sweet or how fun he finds any other man, there’s no one who fits against him like Michael, no one who satisfies every stitched-on craving he has in his soul.

It’s trusting, forgoing any sort of gentleness, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that any violence either of them brings to this is _for _the other, to be buried in the other, the impact of a freefall rather than a fist, needing a soft place to land, needing to be landed on, reshaped, terraformed. Even when they’re not talking to each other, they have this. Even when they’re supposed to be breaking old habits, they have this.

Michael—he alternates between quiet, muffling every little noise into the heel of his hand, and wanton and loud, bared teeth and open mouth howling at the ceiling. Alex is sure he’s being dared, whichever one Michael brings, either to shut him up or open him. He’s equal to both.

He opens him now, opens him with every sharp, firm thrust, with his hand like iron around Michael’s neck, with kisses all over his back and arms and whatever part of his face that he can reach, mostly the corner of his jaw and the soft curve of his cheek. It’s all a balancing act between harshness and tenderness. It’s a tightrope Alex was born to walk.

There’s no waiting, not now, not tonight. Sometimes Alex likes to draw it out, to reduce Michael to a shivering mess, unable to talk, unable to do anything but _beg _for him. It’s always rewarding to strip Michael down to his component parts just to marvel at the beauty of them and put them back together. But tonight? It isn’t possible. Alex left that level of control somewhere back on the gym mat. Tonight he _needs, _and he takes what he’s given.

He holds Michael’s hips up, presses himself all along his writhing back, and _takes _him while he cries out his name in great, grateful bursts of breath. _Alex, ah—ah-h, God, Alex, ahhnnn—_

And Alex comes first, buried as deep inside of him as possible, thrusts his way through it ‘til he’s spent, then replaces his cock with three fingers keeping up the _stretch _and the _pressure _inside him, and god he’s hot and clutching around his hand, Alex’s other hand working his cock until he spills too all across the stained sheets, with a cracking, ecstatic cry.

After, his breath caught, he tries to push himself up onto his arms, tries to pull his clothes to his hands, and before he can even _think _Alex has him flipped face-up and blinking, his wrists pressed to the bed by Alex’s hands manacled around them. Holding him. Keeping him.

“You’re staying the night,” he says. His pulse hasn’t normalized yet. It’s rabbiting in his chest the whole time his brain is screaming _keep him hold him tie him down don’t let him get away _and he’s trying to bat those ugly, yearning thoughts out of the air like flies.

Michael’s lovely mouth pops open, and he says, slowly, “I thought…you might not want…”

“I want you.” He swallows and tries to soften. “Please. Stay. It’s late, and…”

“I’m tired.”

Michael’s smile is genuine, and as delicate as glass. When Alex moves in to kiss it, he lays his lips just as soft as he can be on the corner of his mouth. And Michael rewards him gloriously, arching into him, then nestling back, letting his eyes slip closed as Alex hugs him to him and puts his head in the crook of his neck.

“I’m sore as hell,” he grumbles, flexing his ass against the ache he has to be feeling, but Alex can feel him grinning against his skin, so he just turns his head and laughs through a mouthful of hair.

“I think you can confidently call that a good workout,” he says, letting his hand drift down, fitting his thumbnail against one of the welts from earlier.

“Oh, you worked me out. No doubt about that.”

“Quick way to a good night’s sleep, I’ve found.”

Michael is quiet, after that. It’s minutes and minutes later, Alex passing the time by petting him all along his back in time with his own breathing, lulling him into looseness and comfort, that he presses his lips to Alex’s neck and whispers a hoarse little _yeah, _and does just that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoy~~~~~~ ;)


End file.
